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Eli Lilly said Thursday that it would increase the prices of medicines in Europe and other developed markets “in order to make them lower” in the U.S., an apparent response to the Trump administration’s calls to do so. It singled out the list price of its popular weight-loss drug in the U.K. as part of that effort. (Chen and Payne, 8/14)

President Trump’s planned 15 percent tariff on medicines from Europe has shined a spotlight on Ireland, which sends the United States tens of billions of dollars’ worth of cancer medications, weight-loss drug ingredients and other pharmaceutical products each year. No other country sends more. Manufacturing blockbuster medications there offers tax benefits for American drug companies. But the appeal of Ireland for the industry goes deeper: Drugmakers have long shifted their patents and profits there, as well, to avoid billions of dollars in taxes. (Robbins, 8/14)

A federal judge ordered the nation’s health department to stop giving deportation officials access to the personal information — including home addresses — of all 79 million Medicaid enrollees. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services first handed over the personal data on millions of Medicaid enrollees in a handful of states in June. After an Associated Press report identified the new policy, 20 states filed a lawsuit to stop its implementation. (Seitz and Kindy, 8/14)

The DeSantis administration is making arrangements to hold immigrant detainees at a North Florida prison as a federal judge weighs whether to temporarily shut down Alligator Alcatraz, the makeshift immigration detention camp in the Everglades. “We are calling this the deportation depot,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference on Thursday. “This will be operational soon, it is not going to take forever, but we are also not rushing to do this right this day.” (Ceballos, 8/14)

Federal authorities were attempting to clear homeless encampments in northwestern Washington on Thursday night as part of President Trump’s sprawling takeover of the city’s law enforcement apparatus, after city officials and advocates had spent much of the day urging unhoused people to go to shelters or risk arrest. A federal operation that had been expected to start at 6:30 p.m. seemed to get underway only after dark. At around 9 p.m., federal agents from the F.B.I. and the U.S. Secret Service arrived at Washington Circle in the Foggy Bottom area to remove a few tents where homeless people had long stayed, according to Wes Heppler of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. They retreated after a woman presented a city notice saying she had until Monday to leave. (Robertson and Bogel-Burroughs, 8/14)

A federal judge on Wednesday declined a request to block an Alabama law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public schools and the teaching of what Republican lawmakers dubbed “divisive concepts” related to race and gender. U.S. District Judge David Proctor wrote that University of Alabama students and professors who filed a lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional did not meet the legal burden required for a preliminary injunction, which he called “an extraordinary and drastic remedy.” The civil lawsuit challenging the statute will go forward, but the law will remain in place while it does. (Chandler, 8/14)

Last November, in the days following Donald Trump’s election, leaders at the National Institutes of Health began discussing how to prepare for the coming administration. Any presidential transition comes with uncertainty. But with the conservative policy playbook known as Project 2025 proposing that “the NIH monopoly on directing research should be broken,” rumors had begun to fly. (Oza, Molteni and Chen, 8/15)

For most of Mary Woolley’s career, science and politics have existed harmoniously. On only a few occasions have they become misaligned, said Woolley, who has served as president and CEO of the research advocacy group Research!America since 1990. Those occasions include a movement to slash the budget of the National Institutes of Health in the mid-1990s, a wave of skepticism of science during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Trump administration’s current slashing of research funding. (Paulus, 8/15)

In an unexpected move, the Trump administration signaled recently that it may rely on a controversial federal law to sidestep Harvard University patents that emerged with the help of U.S. government funding. (Silverman, 8/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What The Health?': Trump Further Politicizes Science 

A new executive order from President Donald Trump has potentially broad implications for the future of the federal research enterprise by transferring direct funding decisions away from career professionals to political appointees. And a gunman, reportedly disgruntled over covid vaccines, attacked the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, highlighting how increasingly inflammatory rhetoric from health critics endangers the public health workforce. (8/14)